eSonar’s Micro Sonar Nodes are small form factor units designed to deliver enhanced situational awareness capabilities for AUVs, ROVs and underwater robotics platforms. The ranging altimeter and collision avoidance sonar system utilizes a suppressed side-lobe beam pattern, and provides an operating range of up to 100 metres.
Each unit consists of a PCB that can support up to five 200 kHz transducers via a multiplexer. Transducers can be mounted within a sealed housing along with the PCB, or installed in a free-flooded configuration. The system has been optimized to run on a 14.8 V nominal supply from a 4S1P Li-ion battery pack.
A simple and intuitive GUI is provided that allows pulse length, clamping time, sample rate and other settings to be fully customized, and also enables operational verification prior to system launch.
The AUV Situational Awareness Suite combines real-time data from a variety of sources to equip underwater robotic vehicles with enhanced perception capabilities that allow them to undertake precision survey tasks in confined areas. The innovative suit of technologies can be tailored to specific requirements and to the SWaP (size, weight and power) budget available on the vehicle.
Components include:
- Forward bottom tracking
- Obstacle avoidance sonar
- Surfacing clearance sonar
- Micro sonar nodes
- Close distance measurement
- Vector hydrophone sensors
- Micro-radar (when surfaced)
